


Our Secret Language

by lantadyme



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 07:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lantadyme/pseuds/lantadyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alien girl keeps appearing out of nowhere in her dreams. Kanaya decides to figure out why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Secret Language

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arcaneCalligramancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcaneCalligramancer/gifts).



> Thank you so much to arcaneCalligramancer for being so patient through the whole process of this fic. And thank you to my two illustrators who both had to back out. You guys are hardcore for even volunteering to draw Prospit.

Kanaya sees her for the first time in the marketplace square. Skaia is rising over the horizon, shot through by the buildings of Prospit's skyline. She's dressed from head to toe in pastel colors to match the Prospitians in their celebration of the current holiday. The market is in a hustle. Kanaya tucks her elbows close to herself as she wades through the brightly clothed crowd, blending in perfectly in everything except the softness and darker grey of her troll skin. 

The Prospitians don't seem to notice it—a hollow appears in the crowd, dozens of people diverting their path and leaving a gap in their wake. Kanaya sees it though, catching a glimpse through the spaces between taller Prospitians as they pass her by. If she wasn't pressed in the crowd she would stop, pause and squint and try to understand why this gap has suddenly opened. Instead she's ushered along with them, caught in the wave of the bustling holiday spending. Looking back over her shoulder, she bites her lip and watches the opening, confused. 

Something flickers. Space twists and shimmers in a way that sends a wary shiver up Kanaya's spine. Fabric flutters in the opening, the plain yellow of a Dreamer's clothing standing out against the Prospitians' pastels. The figure of a girl appears for one split second, hair long and tangled, colored a weird alien brown compared to the deep black of every troll's hair. She turns suddenly, her body snapping around in surprise. The air is still unstable around her, warping, and Kanaya inhales sharply as the strange girl's eyes meet her own for one split second. Bright radioactive green framed in a dark, frightened face. 

And then—pop!—she implodes out of existence. 

Kanaya stands there, Prospitian hands pushing her politely to keep moving. The hollow in the crowd vanishes as inexplicably unnoticed as it came to be. No one seems to have witnessed the alien girl who appeared and disappeared. Kanaya's heart is pounding, her blood rushing with adrenaline. A deep instinctual terror is welling up inside of her and she cannot understand why seeing this anomaly has unsettled her as deeply as it has. 

GA: Have You Seen Anything Strange On Prospit Lately   
GC: HMM Y3S 1 DO B3L13V3 1V3 S33N QU1T3 4 LOT L4T3LY   
GC: CONS1D3R1NG 1M BL1ND K4N4Y4   
GA: Right Im Sorry Let Me Rephrase   
GA: Have You Witnessed Anything Strange On Prospit Lately   
GC: 1 4M W1TN3SS TO M4NY TH1NGS   
GC: PROSP1T D3F1N1T3LY H4S 1TS F41R SH4R3 OF STR4NG3N3SS   
GC: BUT 1F YOU M34N OUT OF PROSP1TS OWN NORM4L L3V3L OF W31RD TH3N NOT R34LLY   
GC: 1M ST1LL L34RN1NG TH3 F1N3R 4SP3CTS OF OBS3RV1NG TH3 WORLD THROUGH SM3LL   
GC: SO 1 GU3SS 4 LOT OF TH1NGS WOULD S33M STR4NG3 TO M3   
GA: I Suppose I Was Expecting That Answer   
GC: WH4T 3X4CTLY DO YOU M34N   
GC: D1D YOU S33 SOM3TH1NG OR 1S TH1S 4BOUT THOS3 FLUFFY M4RSHM4LLOW CLOUD V1S1ONS TH4T 1 C4NT T4ST3 Y3T   
GA: A Bit Of Both Honestly   
GA: Ive Been Watching The Clouds Predictions Of The Future As Frequently As I Always Do   
GA: They Havent Fortold Any Developments Out Of The Ordinary Weirdness They Always Predict   
GA: This Was Something Different   
GA: I Saw A New Dreamer   
GC: 4 N3W DR34M3R >:?   
GA: She Only Appeared For A Moment Before She Was Gone Again But It Was Not Vriska   
GA: Vriska Is Still Asleep And None Of The Boys Have Moved   
GA: And She Was   
GA: Terezi Im Completely Sure She Was Not A Troll   
GA: She Had No Horns And Her Skin Was A Strange Brown Color   
GA: Her Eyes Were Also Green But She Didnt Look Old Enough For Adult Eye Coloration Yet   
GA: It Was Very Strange   
GC: YOU S41D SH3 ONLY 4PP34R3D FOR 4 MOM3NT   
GC: WH4T DO3S TH4T M34N 3X4CTLY   
GA: She Seemed To Warp Into Existence For A Split Second And Then The Space Around Her Collapsed Back In On Itself Again   
GA: It Was Also In The Middle Of The Marketplace And No One Other Than Me Noticed Anything Out Of The Ordinary   
GC: TH4TS   
GC: W31RD!!! >:|   
GA: Yes It Was   
GC: 1 DON'T KNOW WH4T 3LS3 TO S4Y   
GC: 1 W1LL D3F1N1T3LY K33P MY NOS3 TO TH3 W1ND 1N C4S3 4 R3P34T 1NC1D3NT H4PP3NS SOM3WH3R3 N34R M3   
GC: TWO 3Y3S 4ND 4 PSYCH1C T4ST3 FOR COLOR 4R3 B3TT3R TH4N JUST TWO 3Y3S   
GA: Thank You Thats A Good Plan   
GA: Im Not Sure If I Hope She Reappears Or Not   
GA: Skaia Is Not Predicting Calamity But Something About Her Presence Was Very Unnerving To Me   
GA: I Suspect It Has Something To Do With My Role As A Space Player Although Im Not Entirely Certain Why   
GA: Just A Hunch   
GC: 1 W1LL T4K3 YOUR HUNCH UND3R 4DV1S3M3NT

 

She sees her for the second time on the palace steps, a week later. Pastel flags flutter in the soft breeze, breaking up the shining gold of the ornate architecture. Kanaya is leaving, her arms occupied with two fat books she's borrowed from the King's vast library. She passes by the guards posted at the entrance and stops in her tracks, yellow dress kissing the bare skin of her calves as she stares wide-eyed at the girl once again appearing in front of her. 

It's the same as last time. None of the Prospitians notice even though there's plenty of foot traffic. Kanaya feels something in her chest twist sharply, some natural talent within her sensing a deep aching wrongness in the area. The air twitches and sparks with spatial energy, bending light around the edges, and in the middle of it stands the strange girl. 

She's facing Kanaya this time. Her eyes are big and green and her teeth are white in her dark face. Her mouth moves as if she's saying something, but Kanaya cannot read the words. The lack of reaction must provoke something in her, because she clenches her fists angrily, turns again to glance sharply over both shoulders. Her face twists into an aggravated frown. 

The weirdness of space is like a headache pounding just behind Kanaya's eyes. She clutches the books closer, unable to move. The girl presses a palm to her head as if she feels the same headache, pounding in time. Her hands are all tied up in colorful bands. Her eyes lock onto Kanaya's again and she peels a green band off her thumb, letting it fall from her fingertips the very instant space contracts and she vanishes from sight. 

Kanaya stands stock still, feeling the change as space repairs the run in its fabric. None of the Prospitians notice it. 

And then a whisper from another world catches up to her: "Are you doing this?" Kanaya knows without a doubt that it's the girl's voice, the girl's words arriving moments later than she saw them spoken.

Her feet tap over the golden steps to the empty place where the girl had appeared. Kanaya stoops and picks up the green band lying abandoned on the floor. It's as green as the girl's eyes. She swallows hard. Kanaya slips it slowly onto her own thumb, onto the same place she'd seen the girl peel it from her finger. 

Something unsettling is happening on Prospit. Kanaya stands up straight and stares up at Skaia in the distance. She needs to know what's going on. 

GA: The Clouds Dont Seem To Want To Tell Me Anything And Im Frustrated   
GA: Have You Heard Any Whispers Of Anything Out Of The Ordinary Lately   
CC: Not out of t)(e ordinary, no.    
CC: Just more of t)(e same perc)(fectly normal -EV-ER APPROAC)(ING CATASTROP)()(-E.   
CC: But maybe if you give me some details I can be more )(elpful, Kanaya! 38)   
GA: I Dont Know Very Much Myself   
GA: As I Said Before Skaia Has Been Largely Unhelpful In Determining What Is Going To Happen   
GA: I Visited The Kings Library In Hopes Of Finding A Precedent Somewhere Among The Stacks But Nothing Concrete Turned Up   
CC: W)(at )(appened t)(is time t)(at )(as you so s)(aken up, t)(oug)(?   
CC: You saw t)(e girl again. You weren't so frig)(tened last time.   
GA: I Wouldnt Classify My Feelings As Frightened So Much As   
GA: Confused And Wary I Suppose   
GA: A One Time Event Could Be Passed Off As Prospits General Strangeness   
GA: She Spoke To Me Though   
CC: W)(at did s)(e say? 38O   
GA: She Asked Me If I Was The One Doing Whatever Is Happening To Her   
GA: From Her Reaction I Doubt She Suspected Me So Much As Shes Searching For The Answer   
CC: )(mm!! T)(at's interesting!   
CC: T)(at means s)(e isn't t)(e one blowing bubbles between t)(e branes!   
GA: Bubbles   
GA: What   
CC: O)(! Sorry, s)(e says t)(at sometimes w)(en s)(e's talking about t)(e ot)(ers of )(er kind.   
CC: S)(e says t)(ey live "between t)(e branes," w)(atever t)(e s)(ell t)(at means.    
GA: Are You Saying You Think Another Emissary Of The Horrorterrors Is Doing This Feferi   
GA: Because That Is Kind Of The Polar Opposite Of Relieving   
GA: Especially Considering She Was Able To Leave Something Behind   
CC: O)( no, I'm not saying it's a s)(ore t)(ing at all, dummy.    
CC: But we know t)(e )(orrorterrors can be )(eard from Derse! T)(ey're not actually t)(at far away from your little golden moon at all!   
GA: Um   
GA: Do You Have Anything Else That Might Help   
CC: I can run some questions by )(er t)(e next time I go to feed )(er?   
CC: All s)(e speaks is stupid riddles and not)(ing ever makes sense w)(en s)(e talks, but   
CC: )(mmmm. 38/   
CC: T)(ere's somet)(ing s)(e JUST started repeating recently. I don't know if it's related but you're t)(e one wit)( t)(e real world contact wit)( t)(is girl, not me.   
GA: Okay What Is It   
CC: Apparently a contract )(as been cast and t)(e )(orrorterrors )(ave struck a deal wit)( someone!    
GA: Wow   
GA: That Cannot Be A Good Thing   
CC: I don't know!   
CC: S)(e )(as all kinds of conflicting emotions about it t)(at I can't really figure out.   
CC: Like s)(e's trying to be )(appy about it, but )(er position on w)(at )(appens in t)(e Ring )(as been compromised since s)(e came to Alternia?   
CC: T)(at's t)(e feeling I get from )(er, anyway.   
CC: Also t)(ere's somet)(ing about an army of c)(ildren? Or needing an army to protect c)(ildren?   
CC: It doesn't make any sense but s)(e keeps repeating it over and over, glub glub glub forever.   
CC: I t)(oug)(t it was t)(e same old song and game about protecting me even t)(oug)( I'm t)(e one w)(o does everyt)(ing for )(er.   
CC: But wit)( your new information I'm starting to question my first interpretation.   
CC: Maybe it )(as somet)(ing to do wit)( t)(is girl? Or if not t)(e girl, t)(en t)(e weird space stuff you've seen?   
GA: Ive Definitely Felt A Very Deep Unease Every Time Shes Appeared   
GA: Not Quite The Level Of Unease Ive Felt When Listening To Recordings Of Glybgolybs Whisperings But   
GA: Its Possible That Its Linked To That As Well As My Position As A Space Player   
GA: Do You Know If The Ring Is Capable Of   
GA: Im Not Sure How To Describe It   
GA: Reaching Through A Universe Like That   
CC: Maybe!   
CC: I don't )(ave experience wit)( a real Dark God. S)(e's only an Emissary.    
CC: But it could be possible?   
GA: Hmm   
GA: Im Not Sure I Like Where This Whole Set Of Events Seems To Be Heading   
CC: I don't know w)(at's )(appening on Prospit, Kanaya, but it does sounds exciting! 38)   
CC: We've been trying to predict t)(e future wit)( your stupid cloud visions and my mom's w)(ispers for )(ow long, Kanaya?   
CC: I t)(ink somet)(ing is finally going to )(appen.   
CC: I t)(ink t)(at sounds like t)(e very definition of exciting! 38D   
GA: Youll Have To Excuse Me For Erring On The Side Of Caution   
CC: )(e)(e, you're always like t)(at so I forgive you.   
CC: Next time s)(e comes t)(roug)(, sea if you can talk to )(er!   
GA: Im Not Sure How Glad I Am That Next Time Is A Thing We Are Now Banking On   
GA: But I Will   
CC: Good luck! 38)

 

Kanaya keeps the green band on her thumb. It's there to greet her every time she goes to sleep, every time she dreams. She doesn't know everything about the game her friends are going to play, but she does know it has to do with the fate of her universe. She isn't sure how she feels about Feferi's theory that that's where the girl comes from. A scrap of another universe on her finger. The idea boggles her. 

Two long weeks pass. Terezi drags her by the hand down Prospit's golden streets, her mouth open to better taste the variation in colors. They search for patches of sour green in the air and find nothing. They revisit the two places the girl has appeared before, Terezi pressing her nose to the very ground to try to sense any subtle difference. Nothing. Vriska stays in bed, asleep. The boys do the same. Skaia's clouds show the same spread of images Kanaya has seen time and time again, the game predicted in pieces before her. No hints about the mysterious world-hopping girl. No hint that she is a part of the approaching calamity. 

The palace ballroom is often deserted. When her dream room is too claustrophobic and when the bustle of Prospit is too distracting, Kanaya comes here to think. The floor is a checker board of white and gold, the pillars carved and vaulted to the ornate ceiling. The west wall is open to the air, Skaia glowing in the distance. Kanaya puts her back to it all, sits crosslegged on the floor and pages slowly through the book in her lap. 

What's coming next? A flash of green on her thumb greets her every time she turns a page.

She doesn't realize what's happening until something tugs like a magnet inside her chest. Her head snaps up and her eyes meet that same radioactive green as the band on her finger. The girl is appearing before her again, and this time it feels different. 

She stands there in a halo of warping space. Her arm comes up, pointing directly at Kanaya. She says something that again Kanaya cannot hear. Kanaya closes her book, sets it aside. She very slowly gets to her feet, shaking her head to let the girl know she can't tell what she's saying. An angry frown flashes over her face and she takes a step, her whole body jerking and tugging, pulling hard to get away from whatever invisible tether is binding her to the anomaly. 

And Kanaya feels it. Something rips—something in spacetime. 

"Help me!" Her voice comes through loud and clear. Again she throws herself away from the warp, the whole thing suddenly burning the same green as her eyes. Her teeth set into a frustrated, determined grimace. 

"How?" Kanaya asks. Space feels unhealthy. She isn't sure she should help, isn't sure she can.

"I'm trying to widen it enough to get out," she says, looking back over her shoulder, still tugging and tugging, her whole body straining. "Can you do anything?" 

She says it as if that's supposed to mean something. Kanaya is taken aback. "I don't know."

"Give me your hand!" she calls, reaching out. There's fear in her eyes, and maybe that's what makes Kanaya reach out and grab her. The girl's fingers clamp down in a vice grip, pulling hard enough to make Kanaya stumble. "Sorry," she says, "but please! I have to get out. I can't let it take me this time!" 

Kanaya gets her footing. The girl's sheer desperation is enough for her to commit. She will help. Whether Feferi is right about the horrorterrors' involvement or not, Kanaya refuses to let this girl fall back through the rip in spacetime. She wants out. She's going to get out. 

Kanaya wraps her other hand around the girl's wrist and pulls with all her weight. 

Reality wobbles like a ripple on a water balloon. Some invisible tether snaps. The girl crashes into Kanaya and they go down in a heap, elbows bashed and both of them shaken. The anomaly still burns, green and empty, and both of them stare at it, hearts racing. 

"Will it disappear without you?" Kanaya breathes. She has no idea what she's just done. 

"It should." 

It feels like space is spinning, whirling down a hungry drain. It's ten times stronger than the last two times Kanaya witnessed it. Whatever the girl did by trying to tug her way out of it changed something. The air around it warps like curved glass, everything fishbowled. 

And then it pops like a hollow explosion, a shockwave echoing through the room after it. Kanaya collapses backward, sprawled out on the gold-and-white tile as some strange spatial instinct inside her finally eases up on the bone-deep flight instinct. She feels exhausted. The girl is sprawled next to her, mouth open as she stares at the ceiling, just breathing. 

"What was that?" 

"That," she says with a huge sigh as she sits up, "was something trying to take me someplace horrible!" 

"Well, that explains everything," Kanaya mutters. She sits up too. She's only been able to see this girl in split second intervals before, all of those choked with adrenaline. Her heart is still thumping but now she can actually look at the long tangle of hair, the pretty round face, the scuffs of dirt on the girl's dress at just about the knees. "You're simply one of the latest in my long line of dimensional hopping visitors. No big deal." 

She smiles. "You're cute! Wow, I can't believe I got out. I wasn't sure I would be able to." She hugs her self like she's making sure all of her is still there. Her hair makes a charming halo around her. Then she holds her hand out to Kanaya in greeting. "We keep running into each other and I should really introduce myself. Hi! I'm Jade!" 

Her flesh is warm like Aradia's when Kanaya shakes her hand. "I'm Kanaya. Hello." 

"Hi, Kanaya." Jade is a lot friendlier than Kanaya had really been expecting, what with all the angry frowning while trapped in a whirling hole in space. 

"You'll have to excuse my attempts at dry humor. It's a habit I've developed in confusing circumstances." 

She laughs. "No, it's okay! I understand. I mean, I definitely know I would be confused if an alien girl just suddenly appeared out of nowhere and asked me to help her from falling through a terrible vortex into the unknown!" 

"And that happened how?" 

Her expression sobers and she tucks her legs under herself. There's gravity in her words that Kanaya expected but hoped not to hear. "I'm not entirely sure. But I can tell you what I do know in hopes that you won't be targeted just like I was." 

"It never occurred to me that I would be a target." 

"I didn't think I would be. But I dream on Prospit when I sleep, too. You didn't see anything in the cloud about me mysteriously materializing and disappearing again did you?" 

"No," Kanaya says slowly. "You have Prospit, too? I'd always thought there was only one Prospit. That's what the books in the King's library say." 

"Right, it's weird. I also thought mine was the only one. But then these energy hotspots started appearing around me sometimes when I dreamed. Weird spatial anomalies. I'm a Space player so I thought I'd try to figure out what they are!" 

"I'm a Space player, too." 

"Yeah!" Jade says. "Yeah, I know. I guessed that once I figured out that you weren't the one doing this to me. The first time one of the portals grabbed me was really scary! It feels so—" she trails off, her eyes going glassy as she thinks about it. Jade shivers from head to toe, hugging herself again. When she speaks again her voice is quieter. "All I know is that there's a really monstrous presence behind them. Something horrible and very, very powerful." 

Kanaya pauses. Jade's more shaken than she wants to show. She did what she needed to escape, but she also bet her life on it by jumping out of spacetime into a universe that isn't her own. She doesn't know for sure why any of this has happened to her. And unfortunately Kanaya only has bad news. "A friend of mine suggested that the horrorterrors could be behind your appearances." 

Jade looks up slowly, apprehension but also surprise on her face. "You're not the only awake dreamer? Wow. What is it like to have one of your friends awake?" 

"Well—" It's strange, and Kanaya's not entirely sure she prefers it to when Terezi was just a sleepwalker. But that's not really what Jade is asking. "No, there's another Prospit dreamer awake under very strange circumstances, but she is not the friend I mean. Another friend. Her lusus is their Emissary."

"What's a lusus." 

"Um. Perhaps Guardian is a word you will find familiar? It's in a few of the books the Queen has lent me." 

"Wow. Her Guardian is a contact for the horrorterrors? That sounds scary!" 

"No, it's okay. It's very prestigious, actually." Although Kanaya would not trade her blood for Feferi's for all the glory in the world. "But do you believe that the horrorterrors could be behind it?" 

Jade frowns and shakes her head. "I don't know. The only knowledge I have about them comes from things I've read that the Queen lent me. Just like you. The presence in the portals is awful, though. All I know is that something very powerful is trying to take me for a reason I don't want to learn. It could be them. I'm even more glad that Bec didn't let them take me, now." 

"Bec?" 

"My, um. My Guardian. The last two times I fell in the portal, when I saw you! He's really powerful for some reason and I guess he sensed that something was trying to take my dream self because he woke me up!" She looks down at her hands, her mouth pressing into a line. "I bet he's trying to wake me up right now. I hope he listens to what I told him earlier and doesn't start tearing up the world looking for me." 

"Um." Kanaya doesn't exactly know what to say to that. Her lusus certainly doesn't have those kinds of powers. But she does remember the other Guardian. The man with the white head who visited her sometimes. She wonders if maybe Jade's Guardian is that kind of being. Perhaps she and Jade are similar in that regard as well. "Do you have no way to get back to him?" 

"I might. But before I try it we should really wait until another portal appears. I'm sorry, Kanaya. I'm used to seeing things in Skaia's clouds and preparing for them. This time I'm sort of planning loosely and flying by the seat of my skirt. I hope I haven't painted a target on you by jumping free right in front of you, but I'm afraid I might have." 

"I don't know what else you could have done." 

"Yeah. I do have a little bit of a plan," she says, her hands folded in her lap. "What kind of Space player are you?" 

"I am a Sylph." 

"Neat! What's a Sylph?" 

"It's like a more magical version of a witch." 

Jade laughs, the uneasiness fading from her eyes a bit. "Okay, but do you know what a Sylph does? Have you read about it?" 

"Not really. I didn't know we all did different things." 

"I think we do," Jade says, pushing herself up to her feet. "And I think we should go see if we can figure out what." 

Jade and Kanaya search the library for an hour before Terezi turns up and appoints herself deputy of research. She seems to hit it off well with Jade. The three of them comb through the stacks of books, looking for anything that can shed some light on what certain classes of player can do compared to others. Kanaya opens a faded old book on the table they've co-opted, and sits down to scan the pages. 

She isn't sure why she wakes up, but the next thing she knows she's back in her room on Alternia, watching the sunset throw its beautiful spread of colors all over her wall. 

Her affinity for the daylight is like that sometimes. Sometimes she just wakes up, no matter what she's doing on Prospit. Kanaya flops back and sighs, raking her fingers through her hair. She needs to sleep again. Soon it will be night and Terezi will wake up. Kanaya doesn't want to leave Jade to research alone, trapped on a strange Prospit that's similar to hers but isn't at the same time. 

It takes her an hour to fall asleep again. Prospit is cool in comparison. 

 

After poking through the entire library, she finds Jade with Terezi in the ballroom. Jade stands roughly in the middle of the same spot of flooring where she'd fallen out of the warp in spacetime. Her back is to everything, tensed in concentration. Terezi sits on the floor with her legs stretched out lazily in front of her and her tongue tasting the air. Half a dozen books are littered and abandoned around them, most of them open to different pages. Kanaya is glad Terezi could be helpful in lieu of her own disappearing act.

Terezi looks over as Kanaya approaches. Her scorched red eyes go mischievous. 

"Sylphs are healers!" she says with a grin, toothy and self-satisfied. She grabs for the book to her left, holding it up and pointing at what is definitely a chapter header illustration and not any words that prove her statement. 

"Hey!" Jade says, turning to see both of them. "You said I could tell her!" 

"Too slow!" Terezi laughs to herself, teasing. "Beaten by a blind girl! What does human defeat taste like, Jade?" 

Jade rolls her eyes and steps over to try to look at Terezi's book. "It tastes like you probably don't even have the right page!" 

Terezi relinquishes the book, still grinning. "Probably not. Every page smells like pepper to me." She still hasn't gotten the knack for reading the old Prospitian texts without either sneezing or licking a pane of glass laid over the ancient paper to keep the ink from smearing and the paper from pulping. Maybe with a few more months practice she'll be able to read just by breathing, but not yet. Which is why Kanaya should have been there helping. 

"I'm sorry for my absence. Healers?" Kanaya asks as she steps up next to them. She's still drowsy. Her dreamself is telling her it's night on Alternia and that she should be awake right now—something she definitely knows. "Healer of Space? How does that work?" 

Jade brightens up. "Good to have you back! Healer of Space. It's probably the most useful title you could have in this situation!" She flips back a few pages in Terezi's book, scanning the text as she speaks. She taps a few of the words, glancing back up to catch Kanaya's confused gaze. "I'm a Witch. At first I thought being a Witch would be great, you'd have all kinds of neat powers! But back on my own Prospit I researched it and learned it had something to do with changing the size of things. Witches grow and shrink things. I had these weird portals opening up leaking creepy dread feelings and I didn't know how growing or shrinking would help me get rid of them. At first I thought I could just shrink them away, but once I learned how to do the size changing I could never shrink them small enough for them to disappear." 

"But you, oh absent day-waker!" Terezi says, still seated on the floor. 

"You can _heal space itself!_ " Jade steps in, eager. "You can close them. That's your natural ability, Kanaya!" 

Kanaya blinks. Jade's enthusiasm doesn't quite carry the amount of understanding she likely thinks it does. Terezi doesn't seem to understand it much either, but Terezi's inattention isn't surprising considering it's not her but Kanaya who's the one likely being targeted by horrors from beyond the Veil. Terezi wanted help her friend while simultaneously getting to stick her nose in the biggest mystery she could find. She doesn't need to understand every detail. Kanaya is the one who needs to ask the questions, and she'll let Kanaya do so at whatever pace she needs. 

"Jade, I'm not entirely sure I understand what you're explaining," Kanaya says. 

"Okay, how about this?" She hands the book back to Terezi (or just ends up dropping it on her lap as Terezi fails to realize she's being handed something) and steps back, facing the same part of the floor she had been facing when Kanaya entered. She waves Kanaya over to watch. "The portals open up by themselves through whatever weird force is causing them." 

"I'm beginning to feel like my friend was right when she suggested the horrorterrors were behind this," Kanaya mutters absently, watching the space around them. 

Terezi raises her eyebrows slowly. "What? Feferi said that?" 

"Yes." 

"Then perhaps I do not want to sit here tasting Miss Sour Apple's aspect energy and waiting for demons to crawl putrid and fishy into this lemon-honey oasis. Good luck, space girls!" she says, waving goodbye once before her dreamself vanishes in a puff of white light, dragged back to her dream room to rest while she's awake. 

Jade stands there, frowning. "Sour apple?" 

Kanaya shrugs. "I doubt she is really that worried. She wanted to give us some space to work. And she's also too proud to say when she's tired." 

"That sounds like her." The other girl laughs and waves Kanaya back over to what she'd been showing her before. "The portals open by themselves. I think there's trace of one around here somewhere. I can feel _something_ familiar." She indicates the couple yards of checkerboard flooring casually, then holds her hands out, thumb and forefinger extended into twin Ls. She joins them together in a little window. "It takes a little concentration and a lot of practice, but eventually—" and then her whole body glows Terezi's aptly described sour apple green, Jade's face scrunched into a grimace of concentration as she draws her hands apart and expands a black hollow in the space before her. 

Kanaya takes a step back. She can feel the power of her aspect at work in the air, can feel the sucking void of whatever it is that's hidden beyond the opening Jade's opened up. 

"I can only make them bigger or smaller. I can't close them or open new ones." Jade says, still holding it open, her hands still burning bright radioactive green. "I escaped from the last one by making it big enough to slip out of." 

"But I'm a healer," Kanaya says, finally understanding. "I can close them." 

"You got it!" Jade says, letting the portal snap closed. Space ripples like a soap bubble. 

Kanaya looks Jade square in the eye and says, "Teach me."

 

They spend two hours in the ballroom trying to learn how to heal space itself. Jade's method of teaching isn't the easiest to pick up, but Kanaya can feel the power of the Space aspect, can feel the scantest traces of the tiny opening still left behind by Jade's entry into this world. When she closes her eyes she can picture it, can imagine the shape of it, but even after two hours of effort she still isn't sure how to summon the energy of her Aspect in order to act. 

All the effort exhausts her further. Eventually she apologizes to Jade and excuses herself, too drowsy on Prospit to stay asleep on Alternia any longer. She wakes up at midnight to the quiet buzzing of her mom's wings in the garden. The night is cool and crisp, the moons bright in the sky. Her computer is full of messages from Terezi and Feferi and everyone else, but she ignores it and pulls on her gardening clothes instead—light loose dress, big boots, a silk scarf to keep the bugs off her neck, and a chainsaw for good measure. She has a lot of theoretical Space Aspect stuff to think about, and trimming back the mulberry bushes will give her the chance to actually ponder things, whereas trying to iron out Eridan's latest screw-up with Vriska will only lead to annoyance and frustration. Kanaya waves to her lusus as she exits her hive, picking her way around the marigolds until she can lay one hand against her smooth white forehead. 

"Big things are happening on Prospit," she whispers. 

The virgin mothergrub thrums fondly deep in her midsection. 

The remainder of the night passes slowly. Kanaya tends to her bushes, peeking under the leaves at the silkworms not yet ready to harvest. In another month she'll gather them and boil them for their silk, but for now she has other plants to care for. The irises get divided and replanted. She treats the lettuce to keep the slugs at bay. The hours pass and the dirt works itself under her nails and into the creases in her palms, and Kanaya stands in the middle of her square of potatoes and holds her hands out in twin Ls like Jade had. She stares at the empty space between the window of her fingers and tries to feel for the fabric she knows is there. 

Heal it. Stitch it back together again. 

She wonders if it will help if she holds her hands like a needle and thread instead. 

 

Prospit is bright and warm when she sleeps again. Even from her window she can see that the moon is passing through Skaia's upper atmosphere. Kanaya watches the clouds for ten minutes or so, but she sees nothing new in their foretelling. Instead she slips from her windowsill and decides to go looking for Jade. 

But a quiet gasp startles her. 

"Oh. Hi Kanaya." 

She turns to find Jade sitting on the roof of her dream room, her pink shoes pressed to the golden domed rooftop and her yellow skirt laid flat over her knees. "Jade. Oh. Hello. I thought you'd still be in the ballroom, I didn't expect—"

Jade smiles and shrugs, something in her eyes distracted and a little sad. "I ran out of things to do and the Queen didn't want to dance with me again, so I figured I'd look around your Prospit and see how it's different." 

"Oh. Is it different?" Kanaya floats there, stories above the cityscape far below. The wind ruffles the hem of her dress. 

"No. It's actually exactly the same. Down to the pattern of cracks in the palace's main entrance steps. I counted them. But you saw how it is in the library. The Prospitians look right through me. Even the Queen took a lot of persuasion. I don't exist here." Jade's mouth narrows into a line and she frowns angrily, trying to dispel the frightened sadness Kanaya can plainly see. 

Kanaya moves and sits next to Jade. She's not that good at comforting people in person. She's lived alone her entire life and only recently has she had Terezi to play with on Prospit. But if she were trapped on a strange Prospit, Kanaya isn't sure she'd be able to show the kind of rock solid strength Jade is showing now. 

"I can see you." 

She nods. "Yeah. It's fine. It's not like I'm going to be stuck here. I definitely have a plan to get back so it's going to be okay." 

The scared conviction in her voice probably doesn't ring the way Jade had intended but Kanaya chooses not to bring that up. As much as she's interested in Jade's plan of escape, she gracefully changes the topic instead. "How did you know which spire was mine?" 

Jade swallows down her emotion gladly. "Oh. I looked in all of them. You have so many friends. Are there seven spires on Derse too? Fourteen players?" 

"I don't think so. Skaia always shows twelve of us. I don't know why it's uneven between the moons." 

"Hmm," she murmurs, then shrugs. "I didn't know it was yours. I just picked the tower that was in the same place as mine was on my Prospit." She looks out over the city, the wind ruffling her long, tangled hair. "The view is the most familiar. It helped me concentrate a little. I, um. My Guardian. When I concentrate really hard I can almost feel him. I think he's lying on my chest back home, trying to wake me up or maybe he's just sending me a message." 

"A message?" 

"Yeah." She presses one hand over her heart. "He's not that smart but I think he's trying to find me. This universe has a different specific vibration than mine did. I didn't notice it until I'd practiced my powers in both. But I think if I keep manipulating the portals with my own specific vibration, I can signal him to come get me." 

"That sounds," Kanaya says, frowning, "complicated." 

"Yeah." She doesn't sound entirely sure of it herself. "Maybe a little impossible. But it's my only way back home, so I'm going to make it work." 

Kanaya doesn't know what to say to that, but she definitely isn't going to cast doubt. She wants Jade to be able to go home as much as Jade does. Kanaya wouldn't want to be trapped somewhere strange where she didn't exist to most of the inhabitants. But more than that, she's fond of Jade. She wants her to be safe and happy, and here she is neither. "It'll work. I'll help." Kanaya says quietly. 

Jade smiles at her. The light of Skaia is bright and warm this time of day. "Thanks, Kanaya."

 

Jade ties her hair back to keep it out of her face. She has the remnant of a portal back to her universe framed between the double Ls of her fingers, her body burning with vibrant green light. She seems tireless. She hasn't slept. It's always Kanaya who needs to call a break from this incessant practicing. 

Kanaya has yet to close the portal all the way, but Jade is getting better at expanding them. When she'd first fallen out she'd had to tug her way out of the circumference. It had taken Kanaya's physical effort to get her out. Now though, the edges are clearly defined as Jade holds it in place, squinting through her glasses and into the blank space beyond. 

"Is the Veil through the portal?" Kanaya asks during a break, remembering the blackness against the contrast of Jade's bright green energy. 

"I don't think so. It doesn't feel as horrible as when something was directing it to take me. It just feels kinda blank." 

"Yeah." Kanaya can feel it too. 

She shrugs, adding, "When I make it big enough I can feel Bec more directly. So I think it's opening into my world." 

Neither of them is sure why it's so dark through the portal, but Jade guesses it has something to do with the distance between universes. She talks about theoretical physics for a while but it's not something Kanaya really understands or finds interesting enough to ask the right questions. Instead they set back to work at learning their respective class powers. 

Kanaya centers herself. It's hard not to get distracted by Jade—this pretty alien girl with brown hair and brown skin and bright green eyes, who glows like the moon and grimaces all her energy and concentration into a rift in spacetime. She's like a force of nature standing three paces from Kanaya. It can be hard to focus. 

But she does. Kanaya focuses. And when she holds her own hands out in front of her she sees the energy of her aspect glow faintly around the curves of her fingers. Jade green. Blood green. Different than the other girl's power, but with the promise of just as much force behind it. The force to seal this rip in both of their universes. 

She focuses on the very edge of the portal, hands outstretched, and when she curls the fingers of one hand she can warp the shape of it, pinch it inward and hold the edges together. It's sticky like ethereal taffy. If she pours enough energy into it she can seal that portion completely. 

"You're getting it!" Jade tells her, smiling. 

She is. Despite the exhaustion and the long hours, Kanaya is getting it. 

Which doesn't relieve her at all when she suddenly feels a deep horrible dread seep into being a few yards to her left. Too close. Too familiar. The same feeling she'd fought off when she was trying to pull Jade out of the portal a day ago, except five or six times more overwhelming. 

They both turn at once, the portal they'd been practicing on instantly forgotten. It snaps into invisibility as the new, awful one blooms into existence. It's so much worse this time. That magnet feeling lurches in Kanaya's chest, some deep Space instinct telling her that something wrong has occurred, telling her she needs to run and she needs to keep running and even then she may not escape this power that threatens to seep into the world. 

Kanaya's heart is pounding, fear gripping her. It feels like she's pinned at the center of a dart board. She takes a step back. 

Jade takes a step forward. 

"It's okay," she says, putting herself between the portal and Kanaya. "This is what happened the first time it came at me. I can barely feel it, so it's focusing on you." 

She sounds so sure but Kanaya feels like there are cold worms coiling in her stomach. She swallows down sour fear. "Jade…"

But Jade's hands are already up, the same as the practice portal. Her fingertips burn bright, concentration coming instantly. She's ready. Kanaya suddenly realizes that she's been ready since the moment she fell into this strange Prospit, maybe even since before the portal took her that third time. She wants to go home and to stay safe, and if a trip into another place to find a strange ally is the step she needed to take to achieve her goal, Jade Harley would take it without hesitation. 

"I can hold it," she says through clenched teeth. Her words are certain. She can't hold it forever but she can hold it now. She can give Kanaya her opening. 

Kanaya's Guardian stopped visiting her long ago. She doesn't have someone to rescue her from the jaws of the horrorterrors like Jade had. She gets one shot at closing this portal, and that shot is now. 

She tries to center herself. Fear is still pooling oily and thick in her stomach, but Kanaya doesn't cave to the desperate instinct to run and run and never stop running. She doesn't take another step back. She steps to the side to bring the portal into view around Jade's middle. It's burning green with Jade's energy. Whatever she's doing to it, it doesn't seem to be getting smaller. It's twice the span of Kanaya's hand, cold darkness peering out of the space beyond—not the dull blank black of the portal they'd been practicing on. This one is full of writhing things, leaking a song that Kanaya can't quite hear but that feels like sickness and dread. 

It takes her two tries to call up the concentration to use her space powers. Her hands are still at her sides, glowing green. Something awful is trying to open up this portal and Kanaya can feel it in every bone in her body. Her heart pounds as she raises her hands and moves to try and close it. 

The edges are slippery, oily and slick. The presence behind this thing is massive and powerful. Kanaya feels infinitesimal as she adds her tiny unpracticed power to the mix. Her vision burns blood green as she pushes aside her panic and concentrates on closing it. 

Fingers outstretched. She pinches the side, closes it up. Jade holds it. It doesn't get larger. Kanaya pinches again, no bigger than last time. She closes it up. Jade is panting next to her, burning bright green. Together they can do this. 

The circumference reduces by inches. It's slow. Kanaya is sweating. She can't hear anything of Prospit outside the ballroom. All she can hear is that song of dread singing directly into her soul. Jade's breathing in tandem with her own. She pinches the edge of the portal again, closes it up. 

Then something horrible happens. It's nothing she can see with her eyes. She feels it deep in her space instincts, in the same instincts that are telling her to run now. The only warning Kanaya gets is Jade's sudden sharp cry. Something slips out of the portal, long and wet and dripping—and it comes directly for her. Icy and wet and before she can brace herself, it wraps itself around her middle and squeezes. Kanaya gasps, the air in her lungs expelled. Suddenly she can hear the song a hundred times louder. She's wanted. She's needed for a mission. She will die if she goes. 

"Kanaya, it's okay!" Jade yells. "It's mad that we're stopping it! You can still close it. Don't let it get you!" 

Kanaya gasps for air. Her middle is ice cold. She remembers pulling Jade out of the portal the first time, remembers how she'd been tethered by something neither of them could see. She thought it was the portal itself but this was the reality. A monster trying to pull her into oblivion. 

Jade holds the portal. Kanaya lifts her hands back up to keep closing it. She pinches the edge, closes it up. The tentacle squeezes. She pinches the edge, closes it up. 

The song pitches up in a crescendo, so loud Kanaya feels her teeth vibrating. And then the tentacle around her middle snaps and droops, falling around her feet and evaporating. She's closed the portal enough to sever it. In the corner of her vision Jade is sweating and trembling, but Kanaya sees her grin. They're almost there. Kanaya smiles too. She grips the edge of the portal and presses both sides of it together. Space is humming as she wills it closed. 

The dread vanishes. The fishbowling wrongness of space vanishes. Whatever instinct inside her that would not stop shouting finally goes limp. Kanaya falls to her knees in the ashes of the horrorterror tentacle. She is absolutely exhausted. She presses her hands to her face and collapses on her side. Jade does the same, flopping down on her back, her ratty ponytail trapped under her back and her glasses askew. 

She looks at Kanaya and grins. "We did it!" she says, and then she laughs and laughs, and Kanaya can't help but join her. 

They did it. 

 

Jade stays another day. She and Kanaya visit the market and the palace entrance to close the remnants of the portals left behind from the first two times she appeared. 

"I can feel Bec through here," she says both times, quietly. "I think he knows what to do now. When the time's right, he'll come." 

She wants to go home but there are some things they need to wrap up first. 

When the new portal appeared, it ignored Jade entirely. It was like it didn't know she was there even though she was manipulating it directly. Just like every time she'd spoken to a Prospitian and gotten no response. 

"It probably won't come back for you. You escaped from it without the help of a Guardian. And when I go home it probably won't come back for me because I did the same thing when I escaped into your Prospit." 

Terezi shows suspect at the theory but Kanaya feels it's right. It's a Space thing. Whatever the horrorterrors had been trying to do, and whatever war they're waging under contract, Jade and Kanaya have escaped it. And with no way into other Prospits to help other Space players, there's nothing more they can do than go back home and wait for their games to start. 

Kanaya finds Jade dancing in the ballroom with the White Queen. Only the Queen seems to notice Jade, and even then she needs persuasion, but here Jade's somehow talked the Queen into a dance. She's smiling, her dress fluttering around her, bright against the Queen's pretty pastels. The Queen leads. There's no music but the sound of their soft footsteps. Kanaya stands against the wall and watches, her hands folded against her stomach. 

"Thank you, your Highness!" Jade says as they finish, stepping back and curtseying. 

The Queen nods. "You are welcome, Witch of Space. May your journey home be a safe one."

"And may your empire burn bright!" 

The Queen leaves the ballroom quietly, nodding to Kanaya as she goes. She can already see her forgetting her dance with the foreign dreamer, the experience fading from her eyes. Kanaya is glad, though. Even if the Queen won't remember it, she and Jade will. 

Jade grins and waves to Kanaya. When Kanaya walks over Jade pulls herself back into waltz form. "Real quick," she says, smiling. "I don't want to leave with out a formal send off!" 

Kanaya sets on hand on Jade's shoulder, slips her other into Jade's outstretched one. "No send off for Terezi?" 

Jade laughs and starts to lead the dance. "Oh, we boogied down earlier while you were still awake. It was an awesome freestyle dance party!" 

"It's a shame I missed it." 

"Yeah, but it's okay. It's nice that it's just the two of us now. We spent so much time in here learning to do the spacey thing. I think I'll always remember you best in here." 

"Me too." Now that the threat is gone, Kanaya catches herself noticing how pretty Jade is. "I'm glad you let me brush your hair since then." 

"Well, you asked so nice and you have such pretty hands!" Jade spins her, her hand ghosting over Kanaya's middle as she turns. Then they're face to face again, taking the next step in the dance. "You're just pretty in general." 

Kanaya blushes a little. "Yes. Well. I would not have asked as nicely or as persistently if you were not also pretty in general." 

It was the right thing to say because Jade giggles. The dance is over. She steps back and bows. Kanaya curtseys. 

"I didn't come here intending to make friends, Kanaya, but I'm going to miss you!" Jade says, her mouth pressed into a little frown. Her eyes are sadder than she probably intends to let on. 

Kanaya remembers her anger on the roof of her dream spire, Jade furious that she felt anything other than determination despite being lost in another world. She doesn't want to press Jade here, doesn't want anger to be the last thing she sees. She knows Jade will regret that. 

"I'll miss you too. But it's best for you to be home. And I'll keep watching the clouds. I haven't seen you in them yet, but maybe some day our paths will cross again." 

Jade nods. She looks skeptical, but Kanaya can tell she likes that idea. "I'll keep watching too."

Jade stretches open the remnant of the portal still in the ballroom. When she opens it wide enough the white face of a lusus peeks through. Kanaya gasps, stepping back, but Jade just laughs and rushes forward. 

"Bec!" she calls. "Kanaya, this is my Guardian!" 

She blinks. He doesn't look anything like the blank-faced man who used to visit her hive. Far more cuddly. And normal for a lusus-like caretaker. "Uh. Hello." 

Bec barks. Jade steps forward. She looks back to Kanaya and waves, her hands still glowing with Space power. The simple "Good bye!" seems hollow in the giant room, but neither of them points it out. Then she reaches through the green ring of the portal and throws her arms around the dog's neck. They disappear in an instant. 

Kanaya closes the portal up behind them. She stands there in the ballroom, the gold-and-white checkerboard pattern of the floor so familiar to her now. She breathes out. 

"I guess that's it, then." 

 

(Three months later, one of Skaia's clouds is rimmed over in radioactive green static, and Kanaya sits on the roof of her dream spire and wonders where the game will take them.) 


End file.
